Since so many people that I have encountered on this site (including, notably, Ian and Mark) seem to have at best a vague understanding of what Agorism is, I decided to sum it up here. It is essentially the tl;dr version of the first few chapters of the New Libertarian Manifesto (SEK3's treatise on the idea). If any fellow agorists disagree with my description, or believe it to be incomplete, understand that I meant herein only to describe the elements of the philosophy; those ideas which make it different from any other. Further details are not necessary to accomplish that, though I would be happy to discuss them below if any should be brought up.
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An agorist is a person of a libertarian mindset who participates in the black market with the deliberate goals of achieving immediate personal freedom by circumventing the state, and the eventual replacement of the state with market institutions consciously developed through counter-economic means. It is both a strategy and a philosophy. One must embrace both in order to be an agorist.
What an Agorist is NOT:
- One who believes in counter-economic revolution but is not a libertarian is simply a "counter-economist".
- One who participates in the black market with no revolutionary goal is only a "black-marketeer".
- A libertarian who does not embrace the counter-economy as a means of achieving liberty is not an agorist. Many who would fall into this category do so not because they denounce Agorism entirely, but because they believe that liberty lies down a path that is contradictory to the purposes of Agorism (namely, politics).
- A libertarian who does not believe that there is freedom to be found in the act of disobeying the state (and getting away with it) is not an agorist. In practice, Agorism is a form of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship implies the taking of risks: in this case, the risk of being penalized by the state, against the expected reward of untaxed profit and the expansion of the unregulated, untaxed counter-economy. Those who refuse to take such risks are not agorists.
- Lastly, though I can't imagine many of this sort exist, a person who believes in other forms of activism to the exclusion of the black market is not an agorist. For example, if a civil disobedience advocate says that surreptitious black market activity is invalid and only open defiance of the state ought to be pursued, he is not an agorist. As I said before, I've never encountered such a person but it is a theoretical example of a non-agorist.
Note, however, that one need not consider the counter-economy the ONLY means of achieving liberty; a person can be an agorist and still follow other avenues toward liberty, such as education, frontier building (e.g. seasteading) and civil disobedience. But insofar as Agorism is a strategy toward the fulfillment of its philosophy, one must consciously participate in the counter-economy in order to be agorist.
To put it another way, a person is an agorist IF he believes in and upholds the non-initiation of force; and TO THE EXTENT THAT he is willing to take risks as a counter-economic entrepreneur, and disposes of the profits gained thereby in a manner consciously directed toward the development of market alternatives to the state.
Right now, there are probably only a handful of people who are 100% agorists. But nobody is doing any measuring as far as I know; what is important is that one does as much as one can with the resources one has at this time. There is no rite of passage or requisite amount of "cred". One may be an agorist for a long time before he actually puts his beliefs into practice; but an agorist recognizes that the practice of his philosophy is a way to be free right now, to whatever small an extent.